Hybrid View

OK...

When you put it that way...i guess it is science!

Thanks Chuck

BTW, the Rum barrel is gonna get filled this weekend...I'm using a 2 gallon toasted oak barrel. I could use some help in selecting/tasting the Rums to use in the vatting...I'll post more on that subject soon.

If any folks would like to trade samples, (minis=50ml, 2 oz or 4oz bottles) send me something you'd like me to taste from your vatting or select bottle and I'll send back a sample from one of my barrels or archive bottles or other vintage whiskies...any interest?...PM me.

Rum Vatting, Barrel #3

Thanks, Gary, seeing what you have written and my recent experiences with Rum, you are spot on!

The picture below shows the bonsai studio being prepared for Tims' arrival. My intention is to take some price point rums for the bulk of the corpus and tweek the profile with a few other, lesser quantity rums (maybe higher priced)to make a vatting of about 3.5-4 gallons.

The selections are made!

I was fortunate to find a store closing its' doors after 33 years in business, the owner sold me the Meyers Rum and the Bacardi Rum below cost, so the price point is taken care of.

The Meyers is Jamaican dark rum and the Bacardi Gold Reserve Anejo is Puerto Rican rum, this is a version no longer available, or so I’m told. (I held one 500ml bottle of this in reserve for archive/refill/trade)

The Meyers is dark, sweet, molasses profile rum, relatively simple with a short finish. Obviously it is not well aged and thus not a lot of wood influence.

The Bacardi is very refined, more sophisticated rum. Golden in color, it is leaning away from the dark profile. It has strong notes of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, putting it in the spicy category, not super sweet to the tongue but it has good oak/wood notes of vanilla and caramel with a medium long, drier finish.

Ben and I opened these two rums last Wednesday night and sampled them, both good in their own rights, neither as good as my new personal favorite the El Dorado 15yo…I digress. I then vatted them in equal amounts…they complimented each other very well. The spicy complexity of the Bacardi played well to fill in the gap created from the simple, one dimensional, younger side of the Meyers. At the same time, the Meyer’s added some dark muscle with the contributing bold molasses sweetness that was lacking in the Bacardi. I'm very pleased to use those two together for the bulk of the blend.

That takes things off to a good start...

Now I just had to wait until help arrived to finish tweaking the vatting with the addition of other available rum resources.

Tim showed up on Friday evening and we went right to work after a quick taste of the 90 proof AMS Corn whiskey and three single malts.

…There were a few rums (the first four) that were not opened and needed to be sampled prior to the start of the blending. We tasted through them and made comment and personal note of each.

Tim and I experimented with eye droppers to measure the ratios of each rum in various combinations. This went on for quite a while with much communication about different characteristics of each blend that worked or didn’t work. Each snifter started off with larger amounts of the Meyer’s and the Bacardi Anejo to replicate the larger quantities that would be used in the blend. We were looking for a combination of qualities that would lend well to further aging and benefit from the influence of the new, toasted oak wood barrel. The picture below shows the final combination of rums, and we used all that are there on the table, this made approximately 3&#189; gallons. The Ron Zacappa 23yo was used for extra sweetness, a bit on the expensive side at 55 bucks a bottle, but this stuff was too sweet to drink neat, so into the blend it went. The Pyrat Blanco was used for a younger/un-aged note. The Pusser’s was filler and was quite similar in nature to the blend as it existed without it, thus not contributing or detracting. We used the Ron Viejo for the nice spice background and a strong anise note. The Rhum Barbancourt added a distinctive balance to the blend, I don’t recall a specific noteworthy feature, but it just contributed to the sum of the totals.

The taste is smooth and rounded, all rums complimenting each other to facilitate the guidelines above.

We noted one thing that Gary had made comment about, and stayed away from the temptation to put a bit of everything in the blend. My thought is that the mixture would be so complex that it would loose distinctiveness. We each have our own taste/tasting preferences. I think this one will do well rebarreled for more ageing. The final goal is to have a rum influenced barrel for maturing/rebarreling BOURBON or Malt...